Vol. 1 - “Track Two:” A Girl Named Go
“Sitting at a red light in tupelo, I fell in love with a girl named Go-“
He stopped me right there. “Now, son,” I already had a hunch these weren’t the details the Sheriff wanted from me. But when he asked me how I landed here, falling for Go wasn’t just part of the story, it was all of it.
“You know full well what I’m asking about, and it ain’t about her. Yet-” The force by which the spit, from the dip he had stuffed in his upper lip, hit his flower-covered Dixie cup was aggressive. I was convinced a steady stream of brown juice was about to spring from the bottom of it. I kept my eyes trained on its paper bottom just in case, partly because I could use the laugh, mostly because I was easily distracted.
“HEY-“he snapped in my face. “I’m not askin’ again. What the hell happened out there?”
I’d have to save the regaling of our love story for our future grandchildren.
“I was only back in town a few days by that point. And I’d been drunk for ’bout two-thirds of it.”
It was an unceremonious homecoming. I left for Nashville with my guitar at my side and a middle finger goodbye. I had little to no intention of ever coming back here, let alone with my tail wedged firmly between my legs. Friends long past their sell date hadn’t stop reminding me of my exit out of Memphis. As such, this humiliating fact was also the key to my lack of sobriety.
I met Go my first night back.
The Sheriff fired another round of spit into his tiny but mighty cup. “You’re telling me in the last three days you went from Nashville, back home to Memphis, only to end up here, just outside of Tupelo?”
I nodded, eyes glued to the bottom of that Dixie. Surely it must be plastic to withstand that stream of rapid-fire saliva.
“When a girl like Go tells you to drive, you just tend to keep on goin’ I suppose.”
The Sheriff swapped his old chew for a fresh dip, graciously allowing me my chance to continue. I thought about skipping this part, on the count of how it makes me look like an asshole. But I figured when you’re being held for questioning, taking liberties with the edits of this story would be a poor choice, and I’d done enough dumb things already.
“I was over at the Riot House, and my tab of Seven and Seven’s was running high-“
“That where you got the black eye?”
“They don’t call it Riot House to entice the out-of-towners to swing by-”
He spits. “Watch it.”
“Sorry, Sir. Yes. That’s where I obtained the shiner.”
I was a few (or six) drinks in when I ran into an old associate. It’s strange, isn’t it? When someone is your friend until they just aren’t. And then calling them, a friend just seems too, phony?
Anyway, I ran into an associate.
He reminded me why I pushed him off of the friend wagon, “The great and talentless hack, back from Music City.”
I racked my brain for the moments that had once created the friend card in my cerebral Rolodex, and, well- it was blank as hell. So I punched him.
Then he and all of his buddies returned the favor right back at me.
As I said, ‘associates.’
I don’t know if it was the mounting concussion, the low bar lighting, or just a glow she had, but there was Go standing over me. With her hand outstretched, she pulled me up off the beer-soaked floor. Even dusted a few crushed pretzels off my back.
“You need ice. And a drink.”
She just got me, you know?
Go went behind the bar, scooped ice into a tea towel, and poured us two healthy drinks, ignoring every other customer around her. She slid them over to me, then took a seat beside me at the bar.
“I’m Go.” She held the towel to my eye gently and clinked her glass into mine with her free hand, before shooting it back down her throat.
“I’m Chord.” She made the same face everyone else did when I told people my name. Now, as a certified failure, they maybe had a point.
“You got a middle name?”
“Clemmons- Clem for short.”
She reached over the bar for the closet bottle and poured herself a second drink. “Let’s try this again.” She clinked glasses with mine, “Clem, I’m Go. Nice to meet ya.”
We downed our drinks, but she kept scanning the bar for something. I imagine a boss of some sort would have ample grounds to tell her to get back to work, so Go put my hand up to hold the ice in place of hers.
“Keep that on your face.”
And with that, she headed out towards the back door. I turned back to the bar as the other Bartender made his way back to his post from the bathroom, checking in with the customers around me. I had to ask him.
“Hey man, what’s the deal with that pretty bartender?”
“Who?” I pointed back at Go as she slipped out the back door.
The Bartender just smirked, “Ah. Looks like you met Go. She waits tables at a diner off the highway.”
I looked at the ice in my towel, and the empty glasses in front of me. The ones Go got from behind the bar she doesn’t even work at. I decided this girl was someone worth getting to know.
“And none of that raised any red flags?”
“I was concussed, and she helped me.”…And though I couldn’t be certain, I was pretty sure I’d already fallen for her.
The Sheriff set down his mighty little cup to make a note on his pocketbook flip pad. “Alright, then. Let’s hear what happened yesterday to land you here today.”
“Well… I asked her out on a date.”
I thought about giving my eye a couple of days to cool down, on account of the swelling. But with the reception I’d been getting from old associates around town, who’s to say my right eye wasn’t headed for the same fate as my left?
So I said screw it and stopped by the Diner the next afternoon.
It was nearly four o’clock by the time I swung through, hoping to catch Go at shift change. It was perfect timing, albeit a little awkward… but spot-on nonetheless. She was at the end of her shift, hollering at her boss in the kitchen. I kept an ear turned toward her while I hovered by the counter. When she came out, red-faced and frazzled, she instantly switched a flip.
“Go just smiled at me. I think I had a calming presence on her.” The Sheriff rolled his eyes, launching a hefty amount of brown goo into that Mary Poppins of Dixie cup.
“Son, I think she played you.”
“I asked her on a date, and we went. That’s all.”
“So the security footage we have of you leaving with her gym bag, that we found loaded with the Diner’s cash?”
“Go asked me to carry it out, she forgot her purse and went back in for it.”
“And the footage of you speeding out of the lot after she hopped in your truck?” The Sheriff had a point. It didn’t look great.
“She told me to go, so we went.” The Sheriff shook his head at me again, making another note. I was beginning to think he might not be taking my side of the story too seriously.
“I’m just dying to hear what you have to say about the bank.”
After Go and I took off from the Diner, she asked if I wouldn’t mind stopping off at the bank for her.
“She asked me to keep the car running because she’d be right back.”
“But you asked her on the date, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“ ’The hell she need cash for then? You’re gentleman, ain’t ya?”
I could see now that no part of the Sheriff believed I wasn’t working with Go from the start, and telling him about the rest of my date with Go wasn’t going to help me change his mind one bit about that.
“She said she needed cash for incidentals. So we stopped.”
“Then she walked in, robbed the place, got back in your car, and you drove the two of you away. And all of that with you being none the wiser?” The Sheriff didn’t even attempt to conceal his laughter.
“Uh-“By this point, I was longing to be back at the Riot House. Getting my face smashed in hurt less than reliving all this. “Uh-huh. That’s exactly right, Sir.”
“Then why does the Waiter from the restaurant you took this girl to remember you as the one who paid? …With the marked bills from the bank.”
I had been dreading retelling this because when it happened, it filled me with more hope than I had been in months. Little did I know she’d be taking that all away from me in a few short hours.
“Well, Sir… those bills were in my coat pocket. But, on the count of all my drinking since being back in Memphis, I just assumed I forgot I had that money in there at all.”
“And you can’t think of any way they might have gotten in there?”
I knew. I just didn’t want to say it…
“Maybe that’s because you knew full well what she was doing in that bank, and that those bills were yours.”
“It’s ’cause she kissed me! Go leaned in real close, kissed me, and must’ve put ’em in my pocket!”
I can’t be sure but, I think the Sheriff felt bad for me at this point. It could’ve been embarrassment; it’s hard to tell how others are feelin’ when you’re that mortified yourself.
“That leads us to the car chase that brought you here- unless I’m missing anything?”
“No, Sir. Go just said she wanted to go for a drive after dinner.”
“So you just kept driving, all the way to Tupelo?”
“A pretty girl asks you drive, and you got no better place to be? Then you drive.”
“How’d she end up behind the wheel of your truck?”
“When we stopped to fill up my truck, she offered to take over driving when she got back from playing the gas station clerk.”
“Once she must’ve seen her face on the news.”
“Yup. That’s probably right, Sir.” I knew what question was coming next, but I’d been dreading it on account that it was most certainly gonna paint me at my dumbest.
“Cops appear, give chase, she floors it, and at a red light, she gets you to jump out and run.”
“I believe it was for a purely good reason, Sir.”
The Sheriff looks down at his notes, “You said, ‘she wanted to save you’ and that ‘she was sorry she got you tangled up in all this.’ “
“Yes, Sir. I believe she was trying to protect me from all I didn’t know. Well, until now…”
The Sheriff closed his little notebook, sucking in a deep breath. “So, this girl used you as a getaway driver, ‘unbeknownst to you,’ while tricking you into falling in love with her. She pins you with a bag full of money and marked bank bills. Then-”
It didn’t sound great when you started to add it all up…
“Then Go gets behind the wheel of your truck and convinces you to hop out. Landing you here, and her out there, still on the run.”
It looked even worse when you totaled up the final score of my brief love story with Go.
“Son, are you dumb? Or you think I’m just some sort of idiot?”
I bit my tongue, “Neither, Sir”
“Then I must be missin’ something.” He lets another rip of spit tear into his old faithful Dixie cup.
“That’s everything. Except-“ I couldn’t believe it; a single drop still hadn’t leaked out the bottom of that damn cup… “I don’t believe it was a trick.”
“What part?” The Sheriff motioned for me to stand… probably for my processing.
“The fallin’ in love part, sir.”
The Sheriff shook his head, patting me on the back. I assume he meant it to be with a bit of empathy, but he came in hot, with the same force meant to spit a hole through that damn Dixie cup of his.
“Well Kid,” the Sheriff showed me out of the interrogation room, “You better pray to God you make it out alive, in love with a girl named Go.”